Upper Grand board to have report cards ready by Aug. 31

June 17, 2015 ·
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The Upper Grand District School Board has devised a plan to issue report cards, with grades only, for its 23,000 elementary school students by the week of August 31.

Teachers have submitted grades to school principals in paper format, but as part of their legal strike action have not entered the grades in the province’s report card software. Originally, the board decided it was not possible for principals to do all of the data entry themselves, and at the same time ensure the accuracy that is achieved through team effort, oversight and double-checking.

The paper copies of the children’s grades are being brought by principals to the board office for confidentiality reasons. The board will hire staff to input the grades into the report card software during July. This will be done at the board office and supervised to ensure accuracy and security. The grades will become part of the child’s Ontario Student Record (OSR).

Parents can drop into their children’s school on August 31 or September 1 to pick up the report card from the school principal or make other arrangements if this is not a suitable time. Elementary schools are closed for the summer until August 31.

Earlier, the Upper Grand board said it will issue Letters of Promotion for elementary school students instead of report cards for the 2014-15 school year.

“This decision was made after we examined all the options available to us,” said board chair Mark Bailey in a press release. “We do recognize and respect that our teachers are participating in a lawful job action, but it includes not inputting marks or comments into report cards. The promotion letter is an acceptable option to the Ministry of Education and will become part of the Ontario Student Record (OSR).”

The board said directing principals and vice principals of 64 schools, some of them large, to do the data entry was not considered a viable option. Due to privacy laws, student information, including student numbers, cannot be made available to anyone without significant due diligence adding other layers of complexity to the process. .

Parents who have questions about a student’s achievement are being invited to contact their child’s teacher to discuss progress prior to the end of the school year.

The promotion letters will be sent home next Monday, June 22.

The Upper Grand board’s action came after the Toronto District School Board announced that it will arrange to have report cards mailed to the parents of its 170,000 elementary students by mid-July, by having principals, vice-principals and administrative staff do work normally performed by teachers.